Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T16:02:00.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Labor Markets, Regional Diversity, and Cotton Harvest Mechanization in the Post-World War II United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Craig Heinicke  and
Wayne A. Grove
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As hand-harvest labor disappeared from the American cotton fields after World War II, labor market dynamics differed between two key production regions, the South and the West. In the South, predominantly resident African Americans and whites harvested cotton, whereas in the West the labor market was composed of white residents, domestic Latino migrant workers, and Mexican nationals temporarily immigrating under the sponsorship of the U.S. government (braceros). We use newly reconstructed data for the two regions and estimate for the first time the regional causes of the demise of the hand-harvest labor force from 1949 to 1964. Whereas cheaper harvest mechanization substantially affected both regions, the downward trend in cotton prices and government programs to control cotton acreage played important roles in the disappearance of hand–harvested cotton in the South, but not in the West.

Type
Special Section: Race, Labor Markets, and Social Disorder in Twentieth-Century America
Information
Social Science History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , summer 2005 , pp. 269 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2005 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alston, Lee J., and Ferrie, Joseph P. (1999) Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Alston, Lee J., and Higgs, Robert (1982) “Contractual mix in southern agriculture since the Civil War: Facts, hypotheses, and tests.” Journal of Economic History 42: 327–53.Google Scholar
Arizona State Employment Service (1951) Arizona Cotton Harvest, 1950: A Study of Hand and Machine Picking of Cotton in Arizona. Phoenix: Employment Security Commission of Arizona.Google Scholar
Arizona State Employment Service (1960) Arizona Cotton Production Survey, 1959–1960. Phoenix: Employment Security Commission of Arizona.Google Scholar
Cable, C. Curtis Jr. (1957) A Chronology of Government Programs for American Upland Cotton. Bulletin No. 587. Fayetteville: Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Agriculture and Home Economics, University of Arkanasas.Google Scholar
Coalson, George O. (1977) The Development of the Migratory Farm Labor System in Texas: 1900–1954. San Francisco, CA: R and E Research Associates.Google Scholar
Cochrane, Willard Wesley, and Ryan, Mary Ellen (1976) American Farm Policy, 1948–1973. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Firman Lytle (1963) “An analysis of the development, operation, and economic significance of the farm labor market in Memphis, Tennessee.” PhD diss., Vanderbilt University.Google Scholar
Daniel, Pete (1985) Breaking the Land: The Transformation of the Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Culture since 1880. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Day, Richard (1967) “The economics of technological change and the demise of the share-cropper.” American Economic Review 57: 427–49.Google Scholar
DeCanio, Stephen J. (1974) Agriculture in the Postbellum South: The Economics of Production and Supply. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Donahue, John J. III, and Heckman, James (1991) “Continuous versus episodic change: The impact of civil rights policy on the economic status of blacks.” Journal of Economic Literature 29: 1603–43.Google Scholar
Eldridge, Hope T., and Kuznets, Simon S. (1964) Population Redistribution and Economic Growth 1870–1950. Vol.3, Demographic Analyses and Interrelations. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Evans, Samuel Lee (1941) “Texas agriculture,1880–1930.” PhD diss., University of Texas.Google Scholar
Fairlie, Robert W., and Sundstrom, William A. (1999) “The emergence, persistence, and recent widening of the racial unemployment gap.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 52: 252–70.Google Scholar
Fisher, Lloyd (1952) The Harvest Labor Market in California. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fite, Gilbert (1984) Cotton Fields No More:Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Foley, Neil (1997) TheWhite Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gonzales, Manuel (1999) Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
Greene, William H. (1997) Econometric Analysis. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Grove, Wayne A. (1996) “The Mexican farm labor program, 1942-64: Government administered labor market insurance for farmers.” Agricultural History 70: 302–20.Google Scholar
Grove, Wayne A. (2000) “The economics of cotton harvest mechanization in the United States, 1920–1970.” PhD diss., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Grove, Wayne A., and Heinicke, Craig (2003) “Better opportunities or worse? The demise of hand harvest labor and cotton, 1949–64.” Journal of Economic History,63 : 736–67.Google Scholar
Heinicke, Craig (1994) “African American migration and mechanized cotton harvesting in the 1950s.” Explorations in Economic History 31: 501–20.Google Scholar
Heinicke, Craig (1997) “The Federal Soil Bank, the decline of cotton, and the demise of the southern plantation in the 1950s.” Paper presented at the Cliometrics meetings of the Allied Social Sciences Association, New Orleans, January. Google Scholar
Heinicke, Craig (1999) “Southern tenancy, machines, and production scale on the eve of the cotton picker’s arrival.” Social Science History 23: 435–58.Google Scholar
Holley, Donald (2000) The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.Google Scholar
Im, Kyung So, Pesaran, M. Hashem, and Yongcheol Shin(1997) “Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels.” Working paper, Department of Economics, Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Tim C., and Smith, George D. (2001) Cotton’s Renaissance: A Study in Market Innovation. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel M., and Campbell, Rex R. (1981) Black Migration in America: A Social Demographic History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kirby, Jack Temple (1987) Rural Worlds Lost:The American South, 1920–1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Lindsey, Morris M., and Heagler, Arthur M. (1967) “Cotton harvesting in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.” Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin No. 739. May. State College: Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station.Google Scholar
Maloney, Thomas (1994) “Wage compression and wage inequality between black and white males in the United States, 1940-60.” Journal of Economic History 54 : 358–81.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. (1995) “Explaining black-white wage convergence, 1940-50.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 48: 470–81.Google Scholar
Martin, Phillip L. (1990) “The outlook for agricultural labor in the 1990s.” U.C. Davis Law Review 23 : 499–523.Google Scholar
McDonagh, Edward C. (1955) Attitudes toward Ethnic Farm Workers in Coachella Valley. Sociology and Social Research No. 40. Reproduction.Google Scholar
McWilliams, Carey (1944) Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States. Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Meier, Frank (1969) “An economic analysis of adoption of the mechanical cotton picker.” PhD diss., Department of Economics, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Musoke, Moses, and Olmstead, Alan (1982) “The rise of the cotton industry in California: A comparative perspective.” Journal of Economic History 42: 385–412.Google Scholar
National Cotton Council of America (1947) Proceedings of the First Annual Cotton Mechanization Conference. Memphis, TN: National Cotton Council of America. Google Scholar
Nerlove, Marc (1958) The Dynamics of Supply:Estimation of Farmers’ Response to Price. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, Willis, and Kislev, Yoav (1986) “The cotton harvester in retrospect: Labor displacement or replacement?” Journal of Economic History 46: 199–216.Google Scholar
Reid, Joseph (1973) “Sharecropping as an understandable market response: The post-bellum South.” Journal of Economic History 33: 106–30.Google Scholar
Sayre, Charles Richard Jr. (1948) “The economics of mechanization in cotton production.” PhD diss., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Schuh, Edward G., and Leeds, J. R. (1963) “A regional analysis of the demand for hired agricultural labor.” Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association 11 : 295–308.Google Scholar
Sitton, Thad, and Utley, Dan K. (1997) From Can to Can’t See: Texas Cotton Farmers on the Southern Prairies. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Street, James (1957) The New Revolution in the Cotton Economy: Mechanization and Its Consequences. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Tyrchniewicz, Edward, and Schuh, G. Edward (1966) “Regional supply of hired labor in agriculture.” Journal of Farm Economics 48: 537–56.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture (1947) “Preliminary survey of major areas requiring outside agricultural labor.” Farm Labor Program, Extension Service, Extension Farm Labor Circular 38. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture (1960) “Farm costs and returns: Commercial farms by type, size, and location.” Economic Research Service, Agricultural Information Bulletin 230. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture (1961) “Costs and returns on commercial farms: Long-term study, 1930–57.” Economic Research Service, Statistical Bulletin No. 297. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture (1974) Statistics on Cotton and Related Data 1920–1973. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Commodity Stabilization Service (1959) “Compilation of statutes relating to soil conservation, marketing quotas, Soil Bank, Commodity Credit Corporation, price support, export and surplus removal, crop insurance, sugar payments, marketing agreements and orders, and related statutes”. Agricultural Handbook No. 158. January 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce (1975) Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Employment Security (1962) Cotton Harvest Mechanization: Effects on Seasonal Hired Labor. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Walton, Anthony (1999) “Technology versus African-Americans.” Atlantic Monthly, January.Google Scholar
Weber, Devra (1994) Dark Sweat, White Gold:California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weisiger, Marsha L. (1995) Land of Plenty:Oklahomans in the Cotton Fields of Arizona, 1933-1942. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren (1987) “Southern agrarian labor contracts as impediments to cotton mechanization.” Journal of Economic History 46: 45–70.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren (1991) “New estimates of the cost of harvesting cotton: 1949-1964.” Research in Economic History 13: 199–225.Google Scholar
Williamson, Jeffrey G., and Lindert, Peter H. (1980) American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Woofter, Thomas J., Blackwell, Gordon W., Hoffsommer, Harold C., Maddox, James G., Massell, Jean M., Williams, B. O., and Wynne, Waller (1936) Landlord and Tenant on the Cotton Plantation. Research Monograph No. 5. Washington, DC: Works Progress Administration.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin (1986) Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin (1987) “The economic revolution in the American South.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 1: 161–78.Google Scholar